Curtain Call
by Haberdashing
Summary: The Sock Opera finale goes disastrously, and the twins are forced to deal with its tragic aftermath.
1. Chapter 1

"I mean, who would sacrifice everything they've worked for just for their dumb sibling?"

Mabel thought back to all the adventures that she and Dipper had had during the summer… how many times had he protected her, or given up what he'd wanted just to make her happy? How many times had he saved her, one way or another? And even before this summer, Dipper had always been there to lend her a helping hand, to support her when she most needed it.

And just like that, Mabel made her decision.

"Dipper would."

As Bill made a guttural sound of confusion, Mabel steeled herself before jumping onto the catwalk, still holding the journal firmly as she wrestled the demon who had taken over her brother's body. Bill let go of the rope as he tried to take the journal from Mabel, and the wedding cake prop fell onto the stage, crushing the puppets below and breaking into pieces. He pushed her against the metal floor of the catwalk, and the detonator that Mabel had kept in her back pocket went off, destroying her box of puppets as well as a good chunk of the theater. Spectators were running away, booing and screaming.

Her play was now well and truly ruined.

But that was all just background noise. What mattered now was keeping the journal away from Bill and finding a way to return her brother to his body. Dipper had given so much for her, over the years, and especially over the course of this strange summer… now it was Mabel's turn to return the favor.

The girl quickly gained the upper hand in the fight, still bursting with energy from her consumption of Mabel Juice, Bill occasionally stumbling as the demon struggled to remain in control of the boy's ailing body (though the scrapes and cuts gained from every stumble only made him grin wider and fight harder). Finally, Mabel was able to pin Bill against the rails of the catwalk, pushing him towards the metal guards with one hand while still holding the journal with the other, the book slightly torn and mangled from the fight but still intact.

"Give my brother his body back, you triangle monster!"

Bipper cackled before returning to his too-wide grin. "I don't think so!" The boy's body slid downwards in one fluid motion until all that remained on the catwalk were his fingers clutching its metal edge.

Mabel dropped the journal, producing a loud _clang! _as the book hit the metal floor of the catwalk, and reached out to Bill with both hands, trying to help him back up. The two made eye contact for a second. Those eyes were not her brother's eyes, and just looking so closely at them made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, but it was her brother's face, her brother's body, dangling perilously to the catwalk. If saving Dipper's body meant losing the journal, it would be well worth the sacrifice.

As Mabel's heart raced, Bill extended his hand and grabbed the journal. By the time she went to clutch his arm and pull him back up, Bill was back where he had started, only the tips of his fingers preventing him from falling.

Bill winked at her.

"Looks like we've reached the end of the show!"

And he let go.

Mabel heard the _crunch _of his body hitting the stage and the _crack _of his bones breaking, but it took her several seconds before she could muster the courage to look down. Her brother's limbs were splayed out in ways that made Mabel cringe just seeing them, and his head definitely wasn't supposed to be twisted around quite that much. The journal had fallen onto the boy's upper chest and was now open to one of the first pages of the journal that the girl had ever seen, a page whose subject she could identify even from afar: it was, unmistakably, about the undead.

It took Mabel a moment to realize that the high-pitched screeching that followed was her own.

"DIPPER!"


	2. Chapter 2

Dipper had seen a lot of strange and disturbing things this summer. There were the monsters- gnomes, ghosts, undead, and more- many of which he had only barely escaped. There was the shapeshifter that, in its final moments before being frozen, had taken on the shape of the boy screaming in agony. And, over the course of the last few hours, he had watched himself fall down the stairs head-first, stab himself with silverware, and attempt to cause his own sister grievous harm.

But none of that could prepare him for the sight of his own body crashing into the floor from a dozen feet above the ground.

Dipper floated towards his body to assess the damage. His limbs were broken, his neck twisted. His body was covered head to toe in wounds, though some of the injuries had been present hours before the impact. But, worst of all, his body was completely motionless, lacking even the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest that the boy had previously taken for granted.

His body's eyelids closed as Bill flew out and returned to his usual triangular shape, his eye still focused on the boy who had become his puppet. Dipper immediately flew over to his body, but when he tried to enter, the boy found that he had phased right through to the other side. He floated around his body again and again, but every attempt to unite his mental and physical self once more proved futile. He passed through his own body as if… as if it were just another object.

"Looks like my work here is done!" The demon tipped his hat towards Dipper. "So long, Pine Tree!"

A second later, before Dipper could fully process the scene around him and respond to Bill's taunt, the demon vanished.

And then Mabel started screaming, a scream that seemed to last for hours on end, leaving Dipper unable to think of anything else. He flew up to her side and saw that she had not emerged unscathed from the encounter either, bearing several scrapes and scratches from her fight with Bill. Mabel's voice grew hoarse, and after several minutes she grew quiet, staring down silently at the body that had once held her brother.

"Mabel? Are you okay?" Dipper said, unsure what he expected as a response. But Mabel didn't stir from her reverie, her downward stare undisturbed.

He had not lost her, but she had lost him.

Mabel stood very close to the edge from which her brother had fallen, and Dipper worried that she might do something reckless in her fragile emotional state, but eventually she stepped away and raced down the steps of the catwalk, her feet loudly clanging in a theatre that was otherwise far too quiet.

Grunkle Stan embraced his great-niece, and the two headed towards the exits, him mumbling words of comfort. Dipper tried once more to enter his body, and once more found that he had only succeeded in floating across the stage. He followed behind his beloved family members as they walked away, arm outstretched, giving off a call that he knew would go unheard.

"MABEL!"


	3. Chapter 3

After the few minutes spent up on the catwalk which had dragged on like hours, Mabel felt as though the rest of the evening flew by in the space of a few seconds. Everything happened far too fast. The world had seemed to be at a stand-still, trapped in slow motion; now she felt as though she was fast-forwarding through her own life.

First came the police, and following them soon after were the paramedics, whose words confirmed what the girl had known deep down inside the instant she saw her brother's body hit the ground. Then came the onlookers, some there to sympathize, others just to gawk. So many people kept repeating the same hollow words as they passed by Mabel, saying how sorry they were, how hard it must be...

Gabe told her that her puppet show had gone perfectly up until the very end, that she had a bright future in the world of puppetry if she chose to pursue it, and earlier that day those words would have brought young Mabel to the peak of ecstasy... but now, they just served as a somber reminder that, in a way, this tragedy was all her fault. If she had just listened to her brother, just helped him out with his project as he had helped her out- as he had _always_ helped her out- then... then...

When the crowds dispersed and Mabel and Grunkle Stan were alone in the Mystery Shack, he just patted her on the back and told her the same tripe as everybody else had, told her that it would be okay, and his voice cracked with every word and she most definitely felt a teardrop hit her shoulder, though her great-uncle adamantly denied it.

In the blink of an eye, night had fallen, Grunkle Stan had fallen asleep on the couch, and Mabel wormed her way under the covers as the moonlight from the attic's lone window illuminated the floor and all that lay upon it.

The girl yawned and turned to her right. "Good night Di-"

Only after almost finishing the sentence did it click that her brother was not going to say his part of their nightly exchange, that he never would again.

Tears streamed down the girl's face as she could no longer hold back the tidal wave of emotion that had been building up all that night. She cried and cried until she could cry no more, not because she had gotten over the pain but because there were simply no tears left to shed.

Waddles climbed onto Mabel's bed and snuggled against her side, and she wrapped her arms around him as she closed her eyes and wished for sleep, wished for this horrible night to finally be over.

The sleep that the girl so desired refused to come.

She broke her grasp on Waddles, who snorted but remained in place as Mabel tossed and turned, first burying herself in a pile of blankets and then letting them slowly but surely migrate to the foot of the bed. Every now and then, in the rare instances when the girl thought that she had finally found a comfortable spot that might just be conducive to nodding off, she would hear a noise too loud to ignore but too muddled to easily identify.

Dipper would have investigated it.

Dipper would have grabbed the journal and ran outside, middle of the night or no, ready to face whatever menace dared give off such an annoying noise and silence it for good.

And then it would probably turn out to be a woodpecker or the wind or something, and she would giggle when he came back and had to admit that he'd left the comfort of his warm bed for nothing.

Mabel turned away from the window, huddling against the wall.

The noise was getting louder. She still couldn't identify it, though something about it sounded vaguely familiar.

The girl sat up, accidentally resting her leg on Waddles' curly tail, and swung her legs onto the side of the bed. The pig squeaked and ran to the other side of the room. She obviously wasn't going to be getting any sleep tonight anyway, so she might as well accept that and do something with her time.

She tilted her head one way, then the other, trying to figure out the direction that the noise was coming from, to no avail. Sighing, she stood up and circled the room, grimacing as her feet squeaked against the wooden floor.

It wasn't any louder by the window, or on the other end of the room by the door...

Mabel crawled onto Dipper's bed (it was still littered with gnawed pens, and each time her knee collided with one, her hands started shaking and she had to take a deep breath before continuing to inch her way forward). No louder there. No softer, either.

So that meant...

She went to the middle of the room, where the moonlight fell upon clothes and books and other detritus that had made its way onto the floor over the course of the summer.

She could hear it better here.

The noise, whatever it was... it was coming from inside.

The girl knelt down and propped her ear against the floor to determine whether the noise was downstairs, closing her eyes so as to focus more fully on the sound. What if _it_ was down there with Grunkle Stan? Or... it wasn't just Grunkle Stan snoring again, was it? Maybe it was, maybe she was getting all worked up over nothing...

"MABEL!"

Mabel leaped up, opening her eyes to a room gone dark as the moon was suddenly covered by a cloud. She knew that sound. She knew that _voice_.

And now, as her eye settled on a suspicious shadow that she could not recall seeing before, she knew where it was coming from.

She must be dreaming. That had to be it. This was just a dream.

The cloud moved on, and the moonlight returned. As light filled the attic once more, it revealed the floating shape of a puppet that Mabel had forgotten about, one that had managed to escape the massacre at the sock opera, one that bore her own visage.

She rubbed her eyes. Yep. Still there.

"Mabel, it's me!" The girl's heart raced as the room filled with the sound of a voice that she had no longer thought she would hear.

Mabel pinched herself, wrinkling her nose at the pain that followed. Wasn't that supposed to prove you weren't dreaming or something?

"...Dipper?"


	4. Chapter 4

"...Dipper?"

She could hear him.

It had worked.

Dipper saw Mabel's eyes grow wide with understanding as she stared... not at him, exactly, not into his face, but at the sock puppet that covered his hand, his lone means of communication.

The moonlight lit up her face, but passed right through his own.

"Yeah, it's me- I wasn't sure that this would work, because the puppet doesn't look like me, but I guess that didn't matter, and I'm sorry I didn't do this sooner, I tried but I just-"

"Bwap." Mabel made a fist and gently bumped it against the top of the sock puppet. "Good to hear from ya, bro-bro."

And then, without warning, Dipper found the sock puppet that he was inhabiting being engulfed in a tight hug.

"You giant _dork_ I thought you were _dead_ I thought you were _gone_ I can't _believe_ it-"

"Mabel-"

"I should have _realized_ but I _didn't_ and it's all my _fault_-"

"Mabel?"

"But it's okay because you're _here_ you're really _here_ I mean it's not the same but _still_-"

"Mabel, you're squishing my hand."

"Oh." Mabel loosened her grip, though not giving it up entirely, and let out a soft, nervous giggle. "Sorry, Dipper."

Dipper felt a teardrop sink into the sock's scratchy fabric.

"Don't worry about it, sis."

"And I'm sorry for obsessing over some dumb guy all week when I should've been watching out for you."

Dipper forced himself to slap on a grin as the sock puppet grew damper. Mabel was supposed to be the cheery one, the one who comforted him when he got too worked up over something, not the one begging for some modicum of solace. In the course of one day, the world had gone all topsy-turvy. "It's okay, Mabel. It'll be okay. We'll figure something out."

"Okay." Mabel sniffled and gave a weak smile, relinquishing her grip on the sock puppet before holding up her hand in a fist. "Mystery twins?"

"Mystery twins." Dipper made a fist of his own and bumped it against Mabel's.

His sister giggled gently, though the tears in her eyes still glimmered under the light streaming in from the window. "I just fist-bumped a _puppet_. How weird is that?"

Dipper rolled his eyes. "Tell me about it."

Their conversation was disrupted by the sound of loud thumping below them, footsteps pounding as they rushed up the stairs. As the door to the twins' room in the attic burst open, Dipper instinctively let go of the puppet, which promptly flopped onto the floor.

"What's with all this racket, kid?" Grunkle Stan had dark circles around his eyes, much like those that had covered Dipper's face only the day before, and a number of red splotches across his face. "It's the middle of the night. You should be sleeping."

Mabel stared at the puppet on the floor, which showed no signs of the activity that had been present only moments before. She was waiting for his response, Dipper realized. Well, if she was waiting for him to explain everything to Grunkle Stan, they might be stuck here for a while.

"I couldn't sleep." Mabel eventually replied, glancing back up at Stan.

"And all that yapping I heard? Talking and going to bed don't mix, ya know."

"Well..."

Her gaze fell onto the puppet again. Dipper weighed his options in his mind. Was he ready to share this secret with Grunkle Stan, the man who had been lying to them about his knowledge of the paranormal for so long? Or might it be best to lay low for a while, to size up the situation further before deciding who to trust?

Dipper reached a conclusion.

Mabel, apparently, reached another.

"I was talking to Dipper."

Stan's eyes grew wide as he crouched down to look at Mabel face to face. "Mabel. Honey. Believe it or not, I know what you're going through. And-" It felt downright unnatural to hear the voice of his grunkle- always gruff, always stoic- waver like that. "-if it helps you to talk out your feelings, well, just make sure to get some rest while you're at it, and maybe keep it down a little."

"You don't _get_ it!" Mabel leaped to her feet, her shadow falling over Stan's head in the moonlight, her eyes blazing. "Dipper's actually here, like, over _here_-" She waved her hand in the general direction of the sock puppet, roughly where Dipper was floating as he observed the situation, unwilling if not unable to do more than watch. "See, I wasn't fighting _him_, he made a deal with this evil triangle guy, and so now he's a ghost and-"

Grunkle Stan stood up and shook his head, his face hardened into a deep frown. "Look, you've had a long day, kid. Get some sleep, and see if you still want to talk about this 'evil triangle demon'-" He surrounded the phrase with air quotes. "-in the morning."

"But Grunkle Stan-"

"Go to bed, Mabel."

And with that, Stan walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Dipper slowly, sheepishly, returned to the sock puppet, though it remained close to the door, Mabel towering over him by much more than the one millimeter separating their usual heights.

"What was that all about, bro-bro?" Mabel put her hands on her hips.

The boy hesitated before responding. "I'm not sure I want to tell Stan about this just yet."

"And why not? Do you really not trust him?"

Dipper thought back to all the times that Grunkle Stan had professed ignorance of the paranormal this summer- how he'd made fun of the journal, claimed that their accounts of supernatural adventures were just proof of an overactive imagination- before revealing that he'd known the truth about the strange happenings of Gravity Falls all along.

The boy couldn't help but wonder what other secrets Stan might still have up his sleeve.

"...I don't know, Mabel."

"You _don't know_?" Mabel glared at Dipper with a fiery gaze. "He's our _grunkle_! He took care of us this whole summer, remember?"

The boy's response slipped out before he could think it over.

"And look how that turned out."

The girl's face fell, indignation turning to shock and horror, the fire in her eyes replaced with ice.

"You... you don't really think..."

"No, no, I didn't mean it, I-"

"This is _not_ Grunkle Stan's fault, Dipper." He'd never heard Mabel's voice so flat and cold before.

"I know, I know-"

"And maybe if you'd trusted him a bit more, he could've helped, and things wouldn't be like..." The girl threw her hands into the hair, then let them descend, instead pointing at the sock puppet. "Well, like _this_!"

"So you think it's my fault." He'd meant it to sound like a question, an accusation, but the statement came out soft and dull and matter-of-fact.

"I-" Mabel thrust the palm of her hand against her forehead hard enough that the boy wondered if it would leave a mark. "No, of course not- I just- augh, I don't know!"

"Maybe Stan was right. Maybe you do need some sleep."

Mabel put her hands back on her hips- her forehead did, indeed, look slightly reddened where her hand had made contact- and rolled her eyes. "Do not."

"Do too. We can discuss things in the morning, alright?"

The girl huffed. "O-_kay_. I bet I won't even sleep anyway."

"One way to find out."

Dipper left the puppet, which sank back onto the floor, as his sister stomped her way into bed, ruffling the sheets noisily and dramatically before immersing herself in them. Despite her words, she soon was caught up in a deep slumber, filling the room with soft snores.

Dipper, for his part, lay down as well, though he knew better than to think he could actually sleep in his current state. He just stared up at the wall, floating an inch above the bed, mind racing. He wondered if there was a way out of his predicament, he thought about how he could patch things up with his sister, and, as those issues led to a number of half-formed jumbled-up ideas with no actual conclusions in sight, the boy tried to figure out why Grunkle Stan's conversation with Mabel had set off warning bells in his head.


End file.
